National Delicacies - Part 4 (southern cough syrup)

This week, we continue our series on national delicacies and explore some cocktails and entrees from around the world.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to an hour of our Time, the podcast where
we pick a topic, research it and come back to
tell you what we've learned. This week, we're on to
part four of our National Delicacy series, and this time
we'll be talking not only about different entrees, but some
alcoholic beverages as well. I'm Dave and I'm Joe.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Deva talking some food.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
Yes we are. I'm doing some some living history here,
if you will, because I have.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Is that what you call farting in a small space.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
I mean, my basement's relatively large.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Living history over there.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
I'm taking it all the way back to the fifteen
hundreds when hygiene praxis weren't what they were today, and
people were drinking a pint of whiskey a week, like
that's a lot of whiskey. But anyway, No, that's what
I have here, Dave, a little bit of a spoiler alert,

(01:18):
but I have one of our National delicacies right here.
And this is an audio medium what I have here,
And it's kind of hard to see for Dave, but
you got like three little little dots there. They've kind
of spread. This is a pisco sour, which is one
of the so I will be having two of the

(01:40):
drinks that I'm going to be discussing today, the Pisco sour,
and then later I'm going to have some Scotch okay,
which you know needs no introduction and also no mix
no mixing.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Right right.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
In fact, there are scotch cocktails which we can maybe
get into but sure typically drank straight up. But I'm
going to go through the you know, tasting of these,
and we're going to talk about some more national delicacies.
I hope folks have enjoyed our previous iterations in this series.
We have national delicacies one, two, and then we kind

(02:22):
of branched out on the third go around, and we
did well, actually we didn't branch out. We branched in,
I guess so speak. We did regional delicacies of the United.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
States, gotcha, Yeah, yeah, we we you know, the first
two we really talked about things from all around the world.
Third one all United States regional. This one we're introducing beverages,
which is something we haven't done before.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
Yeah, just you know, I thought it might be interesting
to because there are a few of these beverages that
actually have been named as national drinks, and the case
of both of the things that I'm going to talk about,

(03:07):
they actually are part of I'm sorry not the one
of the one of the beverages I'm gonna be talking
about is actually like on the UNESCO list for its
country of origin in the case of Scotch and.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
I actually I think I think mine might be too nice.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
And one of the foods I'm going to talk about,
which is savice, is actually also officially listed on the UNESCO.
UNESCO has like World Heritage sites I think people have
like heard of, and then they also have this list
of sort of like they call them intangible things, and
they're often like a food or some aspect of the

(03:44):
culture that you know, people of that nation are quite
proud of. I know, David Zoo kind of like looked
at these. I don't know about you, but I found
for some of these that I would, you know, see
like lists of national delicacies, and it would be like

(04:05):
United States like hamburger and apple pie, but actually we don't.
Like America notably does not have a like listed national delicacy,
and many countries do not, and people I'm sure would
like fiercely argue in that country as to what is
their national delicacy. But then in a few countries we've

(04:26):
found like they actually have, like by some act of
their parliament or cultural body or something like that, have
like said like, yes, this is our national dish, and
I tried to focus on those.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah, well to that point, Joe, I mean, we we
didn't have a national language until recently, so you know,
I think our national dish will soon be like quarter
pounder taken via suppository.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
I think if you ask people in other countries, they
probably would say that the national dish of the United States,
it's is something like a McDonald's hamburger.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Plate plate full of bullshit, that's national dish.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
Yeah, that's certainly the kind of the thing that we've
sort of exported around the world. I would defend the
hamburger as America's national dish.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
Sure.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
I've argued in the first episode that actually, if you
were trying to find like a uniquely American dish, it
would be something like barbecue. Yeah, jazz, that's yeah, that's
a music.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Barbecue.

Speaker 3 (05:34):
Barbecue. Well, I'm saying like, yeah, barbecue is like the
jazz of of of food because it's uh, you know, well.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
Let's not let's not insult barbecue here.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
What's wrong with jazz? I mean, jazz was like very
culturally important and historically important.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
I'm not gonna argue that it's historically important. I'm just
not a fan.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
The Nazis hated it, all right, Well, should we jump
into it here?

Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah? Do you wanna? Do you want to start us off?

Speaker 3 (05:59):
Yeah? Well let me go ahead and start with this,
this Pisco sour since I am having it.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yeah, I tell you it's not an appealing name.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
Well, it is named after the whiskey the bass, I'm sorry,
the bass liquor Pisco, which is also named after the
city in Peru. Now, Pisco Sour is kind of interesting
because both Peru and Chile claim the pist claim Uh

(06:33):
credit for inventing the Pisco sour, but in a lot
of the stories it actually is Uh, an American bartender,
which is credited with inventing it. I'm gonna give you
like the close notes here because it's actually it's really interesting,
I think. But I think the the main right, I

(06:58):
think the sort of agreed upon the problem is the
border of these two countries has changed over time, and
so that's probably why why both sort of claim it.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Sure, but I.

Speaker 3 (07:14):
Am going with Peru, because one of the foods that
I'm going to talk about is the national dish of Peru,
so we're gonna say Peru. But so people have been
trying to figure out, like trying to document the It's
it's such a beverage that's so tied to Chilean and

(07:40):
Peruvian culture that people have kind of like tried to,
you know, talk about its history. And I guess before
I talk about the history that I should back up
a step and say what is in it? So you said,
like the name doesn't sound very aptizing, So I assume
you've never had pisco.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
No, I don't think I have.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
Have you ever had groppam?

Speaker 1 (08:06):
I've heard of groppa, but I don't think I've had
it before.

Speaker 3 (08:08):
Okay, Groppa is also so both are things that are
made from grapes. It's a distilled spirit made from grapes, Okay.
But whereas groppa from Italy is made from palmas, which
is like the skins and the stems and the leaves
and like the leftover stuff from wine production, pisco is

(08:30):
made from grape juice. So it Pisco didn't exist in
South America until grapes were brought there by the colonists. Okay,
but what pisco is is, like I said, it's pisco,

(08:52):
which is this blead? It's a unanged brandy essentially, So
you know, brand is grape juice or wine that's been
distilled and aged, so it's clear or often it could
be like yellowish. So I guess it has like some

(09:15):
of the kind of notes of a brandy. But brandis
are aged, so it definitely has like a biti or flavor.
I would say, how is this not wine? It's distilled,
so I guess I maybe it's your back up a
step and talk about what distilling is. So you've taken
the base.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
Alcohol distilling versus fermentation.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
Well, first it's fermented, okay, so yeast turning the sugar
in this case grape juice into liquid that has alcohol.
Then you distill it. All alcohol is fermented, yes, so
you're boiling that and then alcohol boils at a lower

(09:56):
temperature than water. So then you are running a cooling
system and chilling the distill it down to condense it.
And now you are you have a more concentrated alcoholic substance.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Okay, that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
So that's how distilling. That's very rough. How distilling works.
And we've talked about distilling before and a couple of
other episodes. But that's how you get something that's above
like I don't know, say ten percent alcohol, which is
what like very high proof beers, and then like you know,
wine and things would be okay. So generally the recipe

(10:41):
would be pisco line juice. Again, limes wouldn't have been
in and this is important to my other thing. Limes
would not have been in Peru before colonization because limes
come from the quote unquote western or yeah, eastern hemispher

(11:03):
I should say.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
Right, we're gonna get into this when we talk about
a drink from Brazil that people make with lime now,
but really they in Brazil they use different types of lemons.

Speaker 3 (11:15):
Yeah, So what you do is, so you've got and
it is a sour, So it's very much in the
tradition of something like a whiskey sour, which predates this drink.
It might give you some clues as to its origin.
But you've got pisco lime juice, simple syrup, and egg
white and then I know monern bartenders you different ways,

(11:37):
but traditionally you would dry shake the cocktail glass. All right,
I'm sorry, the cocktail shaker, which means no ice because
you're going to try to froth the egg. And you
can see, Dave, this is it's got like that white
froth that's from the egg white. And then you add
ice and shake it again to chill it. Then you

(11:57):
strain it into a glass. You can use a Nick
and Nora glass. This is just a coop, but like
something with a stem. And then you add three traditionally
three drops of angustura bitters three to five. All the
pictures I saw had three, and then you can use
something to do a little design like swirl it. I

(12:17):
just put the three drops there and called it today
because I was rushing to get down here. Angostar bitters
being a very common cocktail thing, so it's it's very
it's very line forward because you could get like a
full ounce of squeeze fresh squeeze lime in here.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 3 (12:35):
It is very nice.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
But that and this is not the first time you've
had it.

Speaker 3 (12:39):
A Pisco sour. I'm sure I've had a pisco sour.
It's actually for time I made one, although I am
I believe I mentioned that I I'm fairly proficient with
cocktail mixing.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
Do you have any qualms about a drink with raw
egg white in it?

Speaker 3 (12:56):
I do not.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
I wouldn't either, And in fact, when I was in
Florida last week, one of the things I was excited
about is that we found a French restaurant that does
table sides. These her salads.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
Oh hell yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
But my mom was so excited that they had chocolate moose.
She was talking about her all day and then right
before she ordered it, she was like, wait a minute,
chocolate moose has raw egg in it, and she's real
nervous about that. And then she didn't get it, and
I was like, Mom, you gotta get it.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
I think she didn't. I think it can be cooked.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
Well, there's had ry eg in it. Oh well yeah,
and typically it traditionally it has ry eg in it.
She confirmed this. She got nervous enough to like inquire,
and I felt bad. She was so excited, but she
couldn't get past that.

Speaker 3 (13:40):
Yeah, your mom has a lot of food safety concerns.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yeah, well, my caesar salad was pretty dope.

Speaker 3 (13:48):
I don't know. I think you're in sound. Heuse, I
would not really worried about all. Right, So where does
this drink come from, so people try to trace this down.
The basic story that you'll use usually read about this
is that Victor Morris, who was an American bartender. He
was originally from Salt Lake City. He immigrated to Peru

(14:08):
in nineteen oh three. He was working at a cashier
for a railroad and then while he was working there,
legend has it that he ran out of whiskey for
a whiskey sour because he was making he was playing

(14:30):
bartender at the inauguration of opening up a new railroad
line and there's like five thousand people there, so he
ran out of whiskey and he used the local spirit
of pisco. And then eventually he moved to Lima, where
he in nineteen sixteen he opened up a bar called

(14:52):
Morris's Bar, and this is where he got his nickname Gringo.
So apparently like the bar register, which is like where
you would people would like write their signature, has like
a lot of like really famous people. And also one

(15:15):
of the people in the book is John Lands, who
was an inventor of another drink called episco punch, which
is not to be confused with this. But the problem is, well,
so a lot of people in the register like talk right,
like how delicious it was. But the problem was people

(15:41):
have gone back and fairly recently it was talking like
just in the past, like I don't know, like ten
twenty years. They found that there was a recipe for it,
and it's just called cocktail in this book. It's from

(16:02):
nineteen oh three that was found and the book is
called Nueva Manuel de Cochina a la Creola, which is
New Manual of Creole Cooking, so which was published in
Lima in nineteen oh three. And the again it's not
called Pisco star, it's just called cocktail. But it has
an egg white, a cup of pisco, a teaspoon of

(16:23):
sugar in this case not like just powdered sugar, not
or not powdered sugar, but like like granulated sugar instead
of simple syrup, and a few drops of lime juice taste.
So that is like really similar to the pisco sour.
And so this kind of like now throws the entire

(16:44):
story into question. So does this mean that Victor Morris
did not invent the pisco sour? And also does this
mean that like part of the legend is also that
his colleague Mario Brugette was not responsible for adding the

(17:07):
egg white, which is also part of the normal legend.
It's hard to say. It's possible that like this recipe
that was like floating around. It's pretty similar to a
whiskey sour, which is a drink that goes back to
the late eighteen hundreds. So it's now it's like not
necessarily clear exactly who invented this drink, but as far

(17:32):
as like giving it the name the Pisco sour and
making it popular, I would say that that credit still
goes to Victor Morris, and now this drink is extremely popular.
In fact, International Pisco Sour Day is celebrated around the
world on the first Saturday in February every year, and

(17:53):
again it is very strongly associated with both Peru and Chile,
who sort of both sort of claim it. It sort
of left those countries in the sixties where the restaurant

(18:17):
tour Joe Baum promoted the drink in New York City
at a restaurant called Lafonda del Soul, and like I said,
it's sort of achieved worldwide popularity since then. If you're
looking in I know you said you haven't really heard
of a day, but if you're looking in like a
like a recipe book of cocktails, a Pisco sour is

(18:37):
going to be in there. It's like one of the
most famous cocktails in the world.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
Oh, I believe it.

Speaker 3 (18:42):
Yeah, So anyway, I enjoy it. That's a pisco sour
with its somewhat dubious origins.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
What you got, Well, let me talk about something well,
I guess a little bit similar, Kyperina. Yes, have you
had a caperinia before?

Speaker 3 (19:02):
I have? I have not has kachaka? Right, it does.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
I haven't had a caperinia before either, and I think
I would really like this drink. This is considered the
national drink of Brazil. In fat in two thousand and three,
it was you know, had this is it?

Speaker 3 (19:20):
Like?

Speaker 1 (19:21):
What was the word in Unesco indelible heritage, intangible, intangible
That was the word they used, and I happened two
thousand and three for this drink. This is a drink
that is uh kachaka, as you mentioned, which is the
core that is made with sugar cane, usually also sugar,
lime and ice. So it's a pretty simple drink. However,

(19:44):
the original form of it was somewhat different. There is
some debate and this is pretty frequent among these stories
as to the origin of the drink, but most historians
think that it dates back to the early twentieth century
in Brazil, specifically in the sugar cane fields of Salpollo. It's,

(20:05):
you know, kind of a social party drink now, but
originally it was medicinal. You know, what was happening. That's
many of these, Yeah, it was happening in the early
twentieth century. What was the was the you know, let's
say around nineteen eighteen, the Spanish flu, right, the Spanish flu.
So this was something given to ease the symptoms of
the Spanish flu. Now, the original version of it was

(20:27):
made by sugar cane farmers and would have lime or
not actually lime. We'll talk about this some different forms
of lemons that were common in the area, but also
garlic and honey and kachaka. Eventually, as it became more
of a social drink, the garlic and honey went away,
was replaced with just more sugar, and then you have

(20:48):
the drink that we have now.

Speaker 3 (20:50):
I love garlic, I put like obscene amounts of garlic
in my food, but I don't know that I would
want to drink a cocktail garlic. I mean, well, I
will try it, but I don't know if I would,
you know, do that often.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
Sure it sounds a little odd to me as well,
but but yeah, I would, I'd be interested in trying it.
Kachaka itself, this sugarcane based on the core dates back
to the fifteen hundreds, and uh, you know, in what
is now Brazil, it's traditionally made with lime. Across the
world now, but in Brazil there are a couple of
different kinds of regional lemons that are traditionally used. Let's

(21:27):
talk about the name for a second. So the name itself,
and I found a couple like loose translations of this,
but I kind of take exception to some of how
they're they're translated. Caperinia comes from a Portuguese word capria

(21:49):
or a capira. I think it's how you say at capira,
and this refers to someone who is from the countryside.
I read somewhere where if you were going to equate
this word to some thing in English, it would be
like hillbilly. But obviously hill billy has a negative connotation.
Something like redneck has a has a negative connotation. I

(22:10):
don't know for sure if if that is true with
this word in Brazil, but it refers to these people
from the countryside, So it's like a you know, a
countryside drink. One that is in fact, one translation of
it that I read was little countryside drink. I saw

(22:31):
somebody else say, oh, it means little peasant girl, and
I was like, oh, where are they getting that? And
I think what they're getting it is that you know,
in Brazil they speak Portuguese, and Portuguese like Spanish, has
you know, two gender nouns. So caprilla is the diminutive

(22:55):
form of the word capira, and kapira is a masculine noun,
whereas kaprilla is a feminine noun. So the countryside peasant, female,
peasant girl. I think it's very like loose and now
they're translating it, but I think it's a translation when

(23:16):
you don't understand that nouns have gender in this language.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
Yeah, we're not super familiar with that in English.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
Yeah, But the point being that like this idea, the
name of it, it's a very not just a traditional drink,
but a drink of the lower class of of the
of the of like the blue collar class of this area.
But is now the like the most popular drink in

(23:51):
the country.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
Yeah, it's something that I would like to try. I
would say pisco is pretty easy to find at most
liquor stores. I've not tried to look for shaka, but

(24:17):
I'm all about trying new things.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
So yeah, I had not heard of koshaka until I
read about this today. So this is like a drink
I'm definitely not familiar with. Although you know, I like
a gin and tonic, I like a mojito, even though
I don't like mint very much. This feels like a
drink that I would really like. It's you know, light alcohol,
not a dark alcohol of kind of a kind of

(24:39):
a summary drink. So I'd like to try one.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
Yeah, I know that. Something is interesting I've read some
time ago is that apparently ginger beer is pretty hard
to come by in Brazil, Like they they don't manufacture
a lot of ginger beer, and so like it's important

(25:04):
as a kind of expensive and so people but people love,
you know, things like Moscow mule, right. That's yeah, that's
become like one of the most popular drinks in the world,
especially in the last few years. It was recently judged
a cocktail competition last week, and the one that won
people's choice was was actually basically a slight variation of

(25:27):
a Moscow mule. But I digress. So what clever bartenders
in in Brazil have done is that you have you
ever seen those You've seen those nitrogen cream whippers. Yeah,
it's like like the medical metal canisters. And then like
you screw on like a thing that people huff as
a whippet right into it pressurizes for a make of

(25:49):
cream and things like that. Well, they make like a
ginger foam with that to put onto the top of
the cocktail to make a brazil A Brazilian mule has
like a ginger foam on top instead of being topped
of ginger beer. But a lot of times that is
made with kachaka instead of vodka.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
Oh okay, so.

Speaker 3 (26:14):
And I've actually made that with vodka and it's quite delicious.
But I digress. So let's continue in Peru. And one
thing I think I kind of like danced around, but
to make sure I was clear on this, the drink

(26:34):
the cock starting out to coffee. The liquor Pisco is
named after the city Pisco.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
Okay, I was gonna ask.

Speaker 3 (26:42):
Yeah, okay, so now we're gonna talk about I did
pick things for this Dave that I have personally eaten
or drank, which is I don't know just what out
some of my goal I set for myself. I do
like citvy ch.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
You know, I've never had cavice, and I was just
talking about how I would like to try it. What's
usually what shellfish with saffron?

Speaker 3 (27:10):
Uh No, it's uh, we'll get into thinking of I'm
not sure.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
Uh, I'm thinking of pay Oh, okay.

Speaker 3 (27:18):
So savice is has kind of like taken over the world.
I think like it's become quite popular. It's even it's
even apparently in the past like decade, gotten really popular
in the UK, which I think is like.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
They it seems like it's gonna have too much flavor.

Speaker 3 (27:35):
I was in London that thing. I don't know. I
think I was like ever we love to make fun
of British food. I was in London many years ago,
and I was just struck by how many different restaurants
from from all over the world. It's kind of like
like we take this for granted here in the US,
so you can get any kind of food you want
in any like mid sized American city, but Yeah, I'm

(27:59):
sort of not surprised that, but it's apparently taken the
UK by a storm. So what is civj? It is
the traditional It is a traditional dish of Peru. It
has also sorted in many other countries. I will specifically
sort of be focusing on the Peruvian version because in
twenty twenty three it was listed or recognized as a

(28:19):
Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, which is what we were
talking discussing with some of these other things. Yeah, what
savch is and it's also sev c e v i
c h e, or you may also see it spelled
said b j c E b I c h E

(28:43):
or s e v I c h E is a
dish made from seafood mixed with some sort of citrus, okay,

(29:04):
And what happens is the usually lime juice. But what
happens is the citrus cooks or cures the seafood by
actually coagulating the proteins, which is a really similar process
to what happens when food is cooked with heat. It

(29:25):
does kill bacteria because of the acidity, and it also
makes the seafood like opaque, so it looks cooked, but
it retains this really fresh flavor. So people have been
trying to figure out like the origins of savice. There

(29:46):
is actually evidence that this a dish like this existed
at least three thousand years ago. The author Marcel Prescilla,
who want to James Beard Award for her cookbook Grand
Coachina Tina, went kind of went in in search of this,

(30:10):
and even like talking to archaeologists and things like that.
There are there's a the El Brugio archaeological complex and
apparently the people there that lived there were the the
Mochi people who predate the Inca. They ate raw fish

(30:34):
cured in an acid but not lime because of what
we said earlier, right, but even today the people that
live there, they catch fish and they season them with
a with ground hot chili peppers which are native to
South America and seaweed.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
Which would do the same thing.

Speaker 3 (30:57):
Well. Some chilies, especially some native to to that area
of Peru, are quite acidic. So there's actually this idea
that the original or the I guess the predecessor of
of Sevice would have been cured in a papaya like

(31:20):
fruit called tombo. But some people, including this author, have
actually tried to make cevich and cure fish with tumbo,
and it's like not really that acidics or it takes forever.
And so she and other people think that it was
probably the these chili peppers that were doing the job.
But again, onions and citrus, which are now part of

(31:44):
the sort of the modern preparation, which in the case
of citrus, would actually be bitter orange, which is very
popular in Peru specifically, wouldn't wouldn't have been in South
America until after fourteen ninety two. Bitter orange came first,
shortly followed by lemons and limes from Spanish and Portuguese traders.

(32:12):
And so what's interesting is that the people's love of
sushi in the quote unquote Western world that's kind of
primed people's palates to accept sav j and that's partly
it's become popular in a lot of the same places
that sushi has become popular. So and there's a really

(32:36):
good reason for this. In the late nineteenth century, there
was a large migration of Japanese people to Peru and
they took the those immigrants took got the name nick
which is just Japanese for immigrants, and the because uh,

(33:02):
you know, sushi and shashimi is very popular in Japanese cuisine.
What some of these cooks started doing was uh, realizing
that you really didn't need to marinate the fish for
a long long periods of time, that you could marinate
it for just a you know, a much shorter period

(33:23):
of time. Uh. And because of that, this like sort
of cultural mixing, uh cVj became even more popular.

Speaker 1 (33:34):
Gotcha.

Speaker 3 (33:36):
Yeah. So and then, like I said, there are some
similar dishes from around the world. There's a dish from
the Philippines that is fish marinated in vinegar. That's kind
of similar. Some people think that the word cevich is
related to the Spanish word for pickle escabech and in

(34:02):
the colonial era, there are Spanish cookbooks which contain recipes
for fish which is cooked quote unquote in vinegar or
the juice of bitter oranges. Okay, so that may have
some idea. Alternatively, the name civij might come from a
Quechua word, Quechua being one of Peru's pre Columbian peoples

(34:26):
and languages, or or possibly some combination of the above.
But yes, so savice has become like extremely popular around
the world. I was on vacation in Mexico and Mexican
cavij is pretty different, okay from Peruvian cavice. But the

(34:53):
chef at this cevich class that I went to was
actually from Peru, and so he was showing us specifically
how to make Eruvian civich. So what you have is
chunks of like raw fish. It's marinated in lime or
bitter orange juice, with sliced onions, chili peppers. Usually what's

(35:20):
traditionally used is corvina or sea.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
Bass, and then I've seen some like with shrimp.

Speaker 3 (35:29):
Yeah, shrimp is often used. You can make civ ch
with all kinds of different things, but traditionally, yeah, this
is made the traditional or the dish that's cevich that's
very popular now like kind of developed, like I said,
in the seventies from Peruvian Japanese chefs. Now people recommend

(35:53):
only like a very quick marinade. Like I said, according
to food safety experts, though, you'd need at least fifteen
minutes to kill the bacteria in your seafood.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
Okay, I was going to ask, how do you ensure
that you're avoiding food poisoning if you were preparing this yourself.

Speaker 3 (36:12):
Yeah, So when in the class that I took, there
was fish, and the marinate is called it's really interesting.
It's called a leicha ditiguree. And one thing that separates
Peruvians of each a part is that you're usually served
an appetizer of the leacha diti gray to drink. But

(36:42):
a good recipe, apparently, a relatively traditional recipe would be
some fish like grouper or soul or sea bass, lime juice, garlic,
red onion, some kind of hot chili and cilantro stems.

Speaker 1 (37:04):
And then this have you ever made this before?

Speaker 3 (37:07):
I have. This might be served traditionally with cassava or
sweet potatoes and corn, but again, civy chas made all
over the all over Latin America. In Mexico it often
includes avocado served on tacos and things like that, or

(37:29):
a tortilla chips, But anyway, that's Peruvian civ cha.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
This is a dish that I again think I would
really like and would like to try. In fact, I
think I found some. We were in Florida last week. I
should have ordered it, but there was ample grouper, and
every time we had grouper it was fantastic.

Speaker 3 (37:46):
Oh yeah, definitely, I guess I didn't say what leacha
di t gray translates to that's that's milk, milk of
the tiger or tiger's milk.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
I was gonna say it.

Speaker 3 (37:57):
Looks like milk, because what it is it's really finely
blended and strained mix of lime juice or bitter orange
juice raw fish. Because when the fish is marinated in
the lime juice and the other stuff, it sort of
turns the resulting liquid cloudy. Okay, the red onion, garlic, ginger,

(38:24):
and then also sometimes other things like other spices. But
then you what we did was they had been marinating
the fish in that for like a while before we
got to the class. Then we strained it off and
took the fish out. And we only just barely tossed
the shrimp in the legit tea gra because what the

(38:45):
chef was saying was that if you marinated the shrimp
for longer than a few minutes, it just turns to rubber.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
And I guess you wouldn't need I mean, it's like
cooking shrimp, like you don't need it to be in
that situation so long as others.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
It doesn't need to be cooked as long as the
and I say cooked in air quotes it doesn't need
to be cured as long as the fish.

Speaker 1 (39:09):
Yeah, this cook implies heat.

Speaker 3 (39:11):
Cooked implies heat, but really also cooking can it just
means like a chemical change to the proteins of the food?

Speaker 1 (39:19):
Sure?

Speaker 3 (39:21):
Yeah, I've ad cevice with octopus, shrimp, all kinds of stuff.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
Damn Yeah, I want to eat that.

Speaker 3 (39:28):
Yeah, Okay, do.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
You know any place around here that has good savica?

Speaker 3 (39:33):
Certainly the problem is we live in You were at
a place where you could get good savica because you
you were near a coast.

Speaker 1 (39:41):
I had some. I had the best lobster bisk I've
ever had. I had some great ahi tuna. I had grouper.

Speaker 3 (39:49):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
I had amazing scallops. It was scallops with nyaki, and
yaki was just fine, but the scallops were amazing.

Speaker 3 (39:57):
I have to admit this to myself into the world.
I like sushi. I appreciate sushi. It's not among my
favorite foods.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
Oh yeah, I'm I'm a sushi fan.

Speaker 3 (40:11):
I very much like cevich. I feel like it is
like it has I like the big flavors from the
like garlic and hot pepper and stuff like that that
it's very in contrast with the like kind of clean
flavors that you expect from sushi or sashimi.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
Yeah, I got you.

Speaker 3 (40:31):
It's just a preference thing, all right, what you got first, Dave?

Speaker 1 (40:35):
What about the hot toddy? To bring up another drink here.

Speaker 3 (40:40):
I feel like this is a thing we have at
like Christmas, although I'm thinking of wassle.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
Definitely a winter time drink because it is is served hot. Yeah,
It's typically usually whiskey or some sort of dark liquor,
usually whiskey, honey, sugar, lemon, and different spices. Some people
add things to it like cloves, lemon, cinnamon. Depending. In

(41:09):
Canada they use maple syrup. It has many different names
hot whiskey. In Ireland, in the South it's called Southern
cough syrup. Yeah, that checks out, which is fun. But
where does it come from? Well, yeah, where it itself
comes from and where the name comes from kind of

(41:29):
different things. So the word toddy comes from a word
that is a Hindi word. I think it Originally it's
a Sanskrit word taty. And this is a word for
what is called palm wine. It is wine that is

(41:50):
made from by fermenting the sap of palm trees. So
when you know the area that is known as the
West Indies or these one known as the West Indies.
When that area was being colonized, you know, they weren't
able to make and it's just largely by the English.
They weren't able to make beer in those areas because

(42:12):
of the hot weather, so they would import beer. But
to get that beer to last longer, they would water
it down with something that was created by the people
native to that area, which is palm wine. And it
was called tatty.

Speaker 3 (42:31):
Okay, tatty all right, yeah, so.

Speaker 1 (42:34):
It's just a way to like stretch the life of
that beer by watering it down. Okay, over time that
word kind of changed into toddy, as words tend to change.

(42:54):
But as far as how like the modern form of
the hot totty came to be, there is a legend.
Uh well, first, the first time it was written down
wasn't until seventeen eighty six, and it was actually often
referred to as a hot toady, which is a beverage
made of alcoholic the core with hot water, sugar and spices.
And that's a quote from when it was originally written down.

Speaker 3 (43:16):
Okay, it strikes me that this is very similar to
a lot of early like the early like predecessors of
the cocktail, the punch, the punch.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
Okay, yeah, and like.

Speaker 3 (43:34):
You know, like I think in a previous episode I
drank like basically like a pirate punch or the War
of Jenkins Ears and it was like rum water, lime
juice and like some sugar like and then I think
I think it had some beer in it, but like
it's very similar to that.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
Yeah. Well this is the funny thing though, because like, yeah,
eventually the English sort of like claim this drink is there,
which is not surprising.

Speaker 3 (44:01):
They colonized it.

Speaker 1 (44:02):
Well, yeah, they're really just adding hot water to whiskey
and putting sugar in it and calling it a hot toddy.
It doesn't it's not the same. It's not palm wine
with beer, like I've struggled to find that, like a
to b. It's almost just like the name latched on
eventually and was just applied to something else. There is

(44:23):
a legend about a man named Robert Bentley Todd who
had a bar apparently and made the hot drink of brandy,
white cinnamon, sugar, syrup and water and that this is
the hot Toddy. But apparently that is apocryphal, but I
don't know. I mean there's this weird jump in like
this is what a tatty is, and then the word

(44:45):
toddy sort of like evolves over time and then it
just gets applied to this like hot drink where English
people were like, man, I want a whiskey, but it's
cold outside. I'll make that shit hot, which is like
essentially what they did.

Speaker 3 (44:57):
Uh yeah, I mean you're not wrong.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
It's a British thing to do. So if anybody has
more to say on like the the distance between A
to B on that, I would love to know.

Speaker 3 (45:09):
I mean, I feel like that's one of those things
where it's like the further you go back in time,
it's really hard to tease out. I mean, even like
cocktails like like I told you with like the pisco
sour and stuff like that that were you know, invented
like in the modern era, it's it's often still kind
of hard to tease out who originally invented it.

Speaker 1 (45:33):
Yeah, you know, I mentioned this this this gentleman Robert
Bentley Todd and I've talked about the British. This is
actually Scotland. This guy owned a place called Todd's Well
tavern in Edinburgh and whatever. You know, basically like the
what we think of a hot Toddy is being like

(45:54):
Scottish and it's hot and it's got whiskey. But like
I said, the original one was not hot, it was
not from Scotland, was not made with whiskey. So yeah,
I really don't know. I'll probably keep reading about this,
but I think that's interesting that it's almost just like
this name that was used.

Speaker 3 (46:10):
Okay, well, okay, speaking of whiskey, let's talk about whiskey, Dave,
Please specifically we're talking about Scotch, and in honor of
the of Scotch, I'm going to pour myself a weed. Now.

(46:38):
This is Glenn Livett Caribbean Reserve, which is given to
me by my mother in law. And what makes it
Caribbean reserve It is aged in Caribbean rum barrels. So
whiskey or Scotch is an aged spirit, unlike the pisco,

(47:04):
so it has a dark color. You're talking about clear
liquors and dark liquors, Dave, Yeah, dark liquor, and that's
not it. That's not real dark. So it's not aged
like super long time. But I'm also going to put
a little water in it, which is the only thing

(47:24):
that people like role pure as say you should put
into whiskey. So whiskey, scotch, bourbon, all these things. What
does this mean scotch.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
Refer to our episode about about whiskey.

Speaker 3 (47:38):
Yes, scotch must be me Oh, actually, I think the
whiskey upside I wasn't part.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
Of that was actually when we did at the Columbus
Podcast Festival.

Speaker 3 (47:46):
Yeah, that's a quite old one.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
You're going to say Scotch has to be made in Scotland,
except that Japanese whiskey is scotch. It just can't be
called it.

Speaker 3 (47:55):
It's legally not scotch.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
They might it's not allowed to be called, but it
is filter through pete like it is.

Speaker 3 (48:02):
Yeah, va techniques.

Speaker 1 (48:04):
If you buy Japanese whiskey, it's gonna be it's gonna
taste like scotch.

Speaker 3 (48:09):
As recently as two thousand and nine, there were some
refinements to the regulations of scotch whiskey. So whiskey scotch
whiskey is usually spelled w h I s k y
no E, unlike in the US, where we normally add

(48:29):
an e to whiskey. Interesting, so it must be produced
in Scotland, it must be made from malted barley, and
malted barley is the same base grain that beer is
made out of. Yep, that would be. That would contrast

(48:53):
with for instance, in America, bourbon is made from corn. Yes,
And I think that's obviously that's pretty obvious where that
comes from the various different like agricultural traditions of this
country versus and the abundance of corn versus barley in Scotland.

(49:14):
Apparently at us at various different times the powers that
be in Scotland when were worried that people would starve
because they used all their grain to make whiskey and
stuff baking it into bread.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
Yeah, you know, a legitimate concern.

Speaker 3 (49:33):
Which is really really funny. So then then that malted barley,
So malting means like you trick it into sprouting and
then you stop it. And so it's converted some of
the starch in the in the seed to sugar. Oh yeah,
that sugar is and fermented by yeast, and then that

(49:58):
is then distilled to an alcoholic strength of less than
ninety four point eight percent, which in the US would
be one hundred and ninety proof. Okay, then it must
be matured or aged in oak barrels or casks not

(50:18):
exceeding one and eighty five US gallons, which would be
seven hundred liters, and it must be aged for three
years and one day. The original reason why the aging
regulations happened is because the person who the minister who

(50:39):
enacted then thought it would kill the whiskey industry because
people would have to wait. But what happened was people
waited for the three years, drank the resulting whiskey and
were like, holy shit, this tastes much better, and it
actually ended up like skyrocketing the whiskey industry. So the

(51:01):
Scotch Whiskey Association acts as the regulatory body. Oh I'm sorry.
Then after it's aged it then you'd sort of dilute it.
It must have a minimum strength of forty percent alcohol,
which would be eighty US proof. So it can be
more than that, but it has to be at least forty.

(51:24):
This is exactly forty percent this Glenn livet. Let me
have a little bit here. It's very smooth. Fun fact.
A lot of Scotch whiskey is aged in American bourbon casks.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
I read that.

Speaker 3 (51:47):
Yeah, regulations are different. Bourbon whiskey. You can only use
the barrels once it must be aged for at least
two years in quote unquote virgin oak barrels. So then
you have this access of oak barrels and they get

(52:08):
sold to makers of other kinds of spirits. The biggest
purchaser of American oak barrels from the whiskey industry is Scotland.
And then also some are used for aging RUMs, brandies,
even tequila because there are aged aged tequilas interesting, you

(52:35):
can't actually add caramel coloring to Scotch for color only.
That's just to standardize the color because once it like
basically if it ages, it can actually the color can change.
But by adding caramel color you can get the color
to stay consistent throughout the aging process.

Speaker 1 (52:52):
Okay, okay, so that's pretty common.

Speaker 3 (52:55):
Yes, for some of them, not all of them. All right,
so let's talk a little really quickly about the history
of Scotch. Also, Dave, you're talking about Pete. This is
not at a very heavily peted whiskey, so it's not
very smoky.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
Yeah, Glenn Lovett, I have last time I have scotch,
I think it was Glenn Lovett and I do enjoy it,
but it's the kind of thing that some days I
can drink it like no problem, and some days I'm
just like not in the mood.

Speaker 3 (53:19):
I do not often drink straight liquor. I'm more of
a cocktail person. There are a few cocktails made with Scotch,
although it's not very common because the flavor is pretty
strong and so it tends to take over anything that
it's in. But a Rusty Nail is a common which
sounds like a not very aptizing cocktail. But that's a
Scotch whiskey and a liqueur called Dramboui.

Speaker 1 (53:45):
Oh, that's fun to say.

Speaker 3 (53:46):
Dramboui is delicious. It's a liqueur and with honey and
herbs like heather flowers. It smells like flowers. Okay, it's
very sweet. And then the Blood and Sand is one
of my favorite cocktails, named after a nineteen twenties film
about boxing.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
Damn.

Speaker 3 (54:04):
It has blood, orange juice, very classy.

Speaker 1 (54:07):
Okay, Okay.

Speaker 3 (54:08):
So Scotch goes back to the fifteenth century. The earliest
documented record of distilling in Scotland was from fourteen ninety four.
The entry lists eight bowls of malt to Friar John
Corr wherewith to make aquavite aqua viti literally meaning the

(54:29):
water of life. And it's interesting that aquavite was used
to refer to scotch, or was used refer to like
you were like before this, But there wasn't standardization, so
aqua vitae could be applied to something that would resemble
modern day scotch. It could even apply to things that

(54:52):
were more like a wine or a brandy. So there
was not not any kind of like standardization at that time.
So but scotch started to gain in popularity and then
it sort of draw the attention of parliament and the
tax man well, of course, so the first taxes on
scotch were introduced in sixteen forty four. Which what happened

(55:14):
people started moonshining. Now they didn't call it moonshine, but
they started making illicit whiskey. If I could get on
my soapbox for just a minute. If you went to
someplace and you went to a tasting of moonshine, or
you went to the grocery store a liquor store and
you bought moonshine, it was not moonshine. What they sold

(55:35):
you was was unaged whiskey, which is fine sure or whiskey.
It is age for less than two years. If it's moonshine,
it means they can't sell it too legally.

Speaker 1 (55:49):
Oh well, yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (55:50):
You know that nothing bothers me more than when people
call something by a different name that already has like
an established meaning.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
You mean, bone bone, broth, bone.

Speaker 3 (55:59):
Broth, air fryer, fuck that ship I own. I own
an air fryer, and I wish that it was called
something different, But tiny convection of it doesn't sell, and
neither does unaged garbage whiskey.

Speaker 1 (56:17):
Yeah, I would think that wouldn't sell.

Speaker 3 (56:18):
So well, the name for unaged whiskey was used to
be white dog.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
Okay, because it's better because it got a bark hmmm,
it's it burns, but it actually is like the good
ones have like a nice like buttery flavor.

Speaker 3 (56:34):
So all right, back to Scotch. So, like I said,
first taxes were introduced, people started making uh ilicit hoos.
So the uh the tax x sise men. We're playing

(56:56):
kind of like a cat and mouse game, and people
would like hide their stills in like all different kinds
of places. By the eighteen twenties, as many as fourteen
hundred illicit stills are being confiscated every year, and more
than half the whiskey consumed in Scotland was being enjoyed

(57:17):
or was an illicit scotch. So when they talk about
like figures about like oh, you know people drank like
this much scotch, that's like what was made legally, they
were probably also drinking a lot of like illegal scotch
as well. Sure, sure there was a period of history
where they actually offered to like banksically a bounty on

(57:41):
illicit stills. If you turn it in an illicit still
or you know, snitched on someone, they'd give you a reward. Well,
what people would do is they'd be like, oh, look
I found this ilicit still. Here you go, and they
would get the reward and then they wed use it
to buy a new, better one.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
I I like, yeah, I like people narking, yeah, like
a in a way to just work the system.

Speaker 3 (58:04):
Unfortunately, like during like this this sort of period of
time is when it kind of like scotch sort of
became associated with.

Speaker 1 (58:11):
The Highlands, okay, and.

Speaker 3 (58:18):
Associated with people, like the stereotype of like people from
the Highlands like being drunks and things like that. So
like the groundskeeper Wille character from the Simpsons is like
the quintessential stereotype of like a highlander, right, okay, which
kind of like dates all the way back to this
period of like the sixteen hundreds. One of the most

(58:41):
famous tax collectors from the eighteenth century was Robert Burns,
who's scott Scotland's most famous poet. He started off as
a whiskey excise man before he started writing poetry. In
seventeen eighty five he wrote Scotch Drink, which a poem
about Scotland that's still like one of the most famous

(59:04):
poems of Scottish history or history in general.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
Okay, all right.

Speaker 3 (59:10):
Eventually, the Duke of Gordon, who had a lot of
illicit stills on his land, proposed to the House of
Lords that we should just they should make it profitable,
and so in eighteen twenty three the Xcise Act was passed,
which they like put like legal rules on Scotch and
then they started like taxing it. So smuggling sort of

(59:34):
died out, and actually a lot of the distilleries that
you can go to visit in Scotland today were actually
like formerly illicit distilleries that went legit in like the
few years after the eighteen twenties. Right in eighteen thirty one,

(59:54):
Anius Coffee invented the patent still, which was a process
where you could sort of continuously feed multi barley into
the process and make grain whiskey which was a lighter,
less intense product, and then you could mix grain whiskey

(01:00:18):
with scotch whiskey and make blended scotches that were like
want a wider appeal. Right in the nineteenth century, some
of the big famous distilleries like the the Doar family,
Johnny Walker, James Shivas, which are like that basically just

(01:00:43):
listed the top Scotch brands as far as like export
sure and then also Scotch sort of became popular around
the world. Part of this was in the eighteen hundreds
there was a beetle, the file Sarah, which devastated French vineyards,
and so basically brandy and wine were the entire industry

(01:01:10):
was decimated, and so wine was still popular among amongst
like the English aristocracy, So Absinthe became popular in France,
and Scotch became popular in England and even amongst like

(01:01:30):
the upper classes in nineteen twelve, the Scotch Whiskey Association
was set up in order to regulate the industry and
make it easier to export. In the nineteen twenties, prohibition
happened in the United States. Look at our episode about prohibition.
But you know, like we talked about all the exemptions,

(01:01:54):
including the exemption that was written for Winston Churchill, who
was most famous for drinking gin and a bottle of
champagne every day for breakfast. Sure did, but he apparently
also enjoyed Scotch after During after World War Two, one

(01:02:16):
of the ministers apparently said the country needs food. Dollars
means food and whiskey means dollars, and so there was
a concerted effort to export whiskey. It's really interesting because actually,
as whiskey consumption has decreased in Scotland, exports and production

(01:02:39):
of whiskey has increased. Huh the largest consumers of whiskey
in the world.

Speaker 1 (01:02:50):
Scotland is not number one, okay, and who is?

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
I think it's like the United States, Japan and then
Scotland is this per capita in general, uh, per capita
France is up there too. Actually, no, that's not a
big surprise. Yeah, so that's that's uh Scotch. So Scotch
doesn't look exactly like it it did. It's kind of

(01:03:17):
it's that kind of evolved over time. But yeah, yeah,
so the I'm talking about Scotch whiskey. The top consumer
is the US that is global sales total, not per capita.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
Yeah. See that's the thing. I mean, we're huge countries.

Speaker 3 (01:03:40):
We're a big country. Yeah. So yeah, okay, so that's Scotch.

Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
Well, Joe, I think we're I think we're kind of
out of time. I think we need to save some
of the stuff we were going to talk about for
the next time we do this. But I did want
to end with something just thing. You know, I was
as you were talking, I was looking more into the
hot Toddy and I still can't find this like a
to B. Maybe there really isn't one. It just like

(01:04:07):
evolved into totally different drink and got that name just
sort of carried with it. At some point. They an
author named Vittoria Moore, I think this book is maybe
from the early two thousands, wrote a book called how
to Drink And you know I mentioned that, you know
that Brazilian drink was you know, medicinal relating to the

(01:04:28):
Spanish flu. Obviously, the hot toddy, given that it's hot,
was often used as a way to ease illness as well,
and she describes the drink as quote. Now again, this
drink often has lemon, honey, whiskey, different spices, so she
wrote writes that the drink has the vitamin C for health,

(01:04:51):
the honey to soothe, and the alcohol to numb.

Speaker 3 (01:04:55):
Okay, yeah, I like that. There was so many people
are some many of these beverages which are like medicinal.
There's a lot of uh, there's there's actually around like
the early nineteen hundred's, some scotch was marketed as being

(01:05:17):
a medication for diabetes.

Speaker 1 (01:05:21):
Oh really Yeah, yeah, that's probably not true.

Speaker 3 (01:05:27):
The height of height of pant medicine.

Speaker 1 (01:05:30):
Hell yeah, man, I mean you can give it a try.
I do wish I had a nice bottle of Scotch
in my house, which I I do not, but I
should get one.

Speaker 3 (01:05:38):
I I I acquire Scotch faster than I can drink
because I really don't really don't drink it that much.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
Yeah, and it's it's it's not something you're going to
drink quickly or you know, a lot of at one time, so.

Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
No, ideally not.

Speaker 1 (01:05:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:58):
All right, Well, well, if you folks uh out there
in TV land, if you like these episodes, were Dave
and I talked about foods we would like to eat,
or if they're if there's a national delicacy that you
are very fond of that you would like us to discuss,
you know, let us know, get after us.

Speaker 1 (01:06:18):
Yeah, absolutely, all right. Well on that note, go get
some Savich. I'm I'm on the lookout, man, I'm on
the prowl for that Savich.

Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
I bet your wife could make you some cevich.

Speaker 1 (01:06:35):
I bet she could, but I bet that it would
make her nervous. Yes, but there's got to be a
camera metell place that's got savich. Fat. I want to
find Savich for my birthday in a few weeks.

Speaker 3 (01:06:51):
I wish, I wish you luck.

Speaker 1 (01:06:53):
All right, everybody, tat to you soon.

Speaker 3 (01:06:56):
Bye.

Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
Thank you for listening to an Hour of Our Time.

Speaker 3 (01:07:02):
If you'll like what you heard, explore our catalog of
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Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
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